Inequities for women in the workforce, including pay gaps and discrimination, remain stubbornly hard to shift in New Zealand, say workers and advocates.
Tegan, a female builder living in the South Island, said she had experienced gender inequity at the frontline, especially working in a trade as a woman.
When she was applying for work as an apprentice, the 26-year-old said securing a job was one of the hardest parts.
“I called like four or five companies and nobody would meet with me.”
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When she was finally hired by a tiny home company in Nelson, she was recruited alongside a male counterpart.
“We were hired at the same time and we both started on the same amount, but they didn’t take into account my year and a half of experience and his zero, we just started on the same pay.
“I didn’t want to think too much into it because everyone always says ‘you don’t know it’s because you’re a woman, you don’t have any proof of that you’re just guessing’ but I had a feeling that if I’m the one with experience why are we being paid the same?”
In her first week of work, Tegan said a male co-worker told her she should “never be paid as much as a man because I’ll never be able to do the job the same way a man can”.
“He also said that I wasn’t his ideal apprentice because I was ‘too old’ when I was 24 at the time.
“He said his ideal apprentice would be a guy fresh out of high school at the peak of his physical fitness, so he can do all the heavy lifting.”
Throughout her two years in building she recounted numerous times when she was unfairly treated and patronised for being a woman.
Stuff
A builder from Nelson recalls being told she shouldn’t be paid as much as a man because she couldn’t do as good of a job. (file photo)
“I’ve been told I’m playing victim, I’ve been told it’s anecdotal that I was getting treated badly, and I’m a woman.”
“You’re constantly having to prove yourself by being better,” she said.
“A man with no experience will always be regarded higher than me even when I’m fully qualified.”
Tegan has taken a step back from building since she faced the issues onsite but said one day she wanted to subcontract other women alongside her own all-female building business.
“I can open up a new avenue for other women to enter into the trade through me and not have to go through what I went through.”
Erin Benton, owner of Knead Bakery in New Plymouth “unintentionally” built her own all-women team.
“It started organically, it started with a couple of wāhine I actually knew already.”
When she started hiring she did get some male applicants, but a woman was chosen for the first managerial role and happened to be pregnant when she was hired.
“The woman who got the position had the best experience and best references, so she really was just the person for the job.
“Her being hapū wasn’t something that stopped us looking at her for the position. She had all the experience, the knowledge, the skills and the references and people to back her up for the position.”
Benton said since building the business she co-owned with her partner and being a mother herself she knew what qualities women had to offer to the workforce.
“If you’re investing in your team, what you can instil in them, they can give back to the business.”
ANDY MACDONALD/Stuff
Erin Benton owns Knead Bakery and says she unintentionally hired an all-women team.
However, she said she would never be against offering employment to men.
“It’s always whoever is best for the job gets the job, there’s a lot more to employing people than what’s written on the paper.
“As long as tāne understands the mana wāhine, they understand the importance and role of wāhine in our world then kei te pai,” she said.
“I’ll never close the door because there’s much to learn from their way of thinking as well.”
Experts have said to open more opportunities for women in New Zealand, businesses needed to normalise pay gap reporting and be transparent on how they were running their businesses.
Founder of Mind the Gap Dellwyn Stuart said the pay gap in New Zealand had been stuck at 10% for a decade with 20% of that figure determined by education or sector choice.
However, 80% can’t be attributed to those things, Stuart said, indicating it was caused by bias and discrimination.
Information on the Mind The Gap website stated for every $1 a Pākeha man earns, a Pākeha female earns 89 cents.
However, the issue was not isolated to gender. Pay gaps could also be attributed to cultural differences, disability needs or religion.
A Māori or Asian man earns 86 cents to a Pākeha man’s dollar while an Asian woman earns 83 cents, Pasifika man 81 cents, Māori woman 81 cents and a Pasifika woman 75 cents.
Stuart said to fix this issue, businesses needed to be held to account.
Supplied
Founder of Mind The Gap Dellwyn Stuart says pay gap reporting is a way for New Zealand to minimise the gap between men and women in the workforce.
That’s why Mind The Gap started a pay registry for businesses to voluntarily report on pay scales between employees.
Not only would this bring the problem to the forefront and encourage businesses to change how staff are paid, but it also showed transparency between and employer and an employee, Stuart said.
Beth Goodwin, manager employment relations policy of Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment agreed the national pay gap had remained stagnant for more than a decade, specifically for women, Māori, Pacific people, and people from other ethnic communities.
She said those communities experienced “persistently poorer labour market outcomes, reflected by higher rates of unemployment, underutilisation, and underemployment, as well as by persistent pay gaps when compared to Pākehā men”.
“In 2022, wāhine Māori and Pacific women experience a gender pay gap of 15.7%.
“80% of the gender pay gap is driven by factors that cannot be explained by quantitative differences in education, occupation, or employment conditions such as working part-time.”
Goodwin said work in the public sector had been underway to address the problem.
“Employers and employees in New Zealand generally treat pay as private and confidential information that is not easily accessible within or across employers or employees.”
Keeping that information confidential meant gender and ethnic pay gaps were driven even further.
”Women, especially wāhine Māori and Pacific women, are historically more affected by economic shocks, and take longer to recover in terms of earnings and rates of employment.”
Centralised reporting was an effective way to show where gender pay gaps were happening and take the right steps in fixing them.
Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission has analysed and published gender and ethnic pay gaps across public sector agencies and individual agencies annually dating back to 2001.
Goodwin said as well as this work, guidance was available for the public service on measuring and analysing their own gender and ethnic pay gaps.
“Additionally, government agencies are already required to publish their gender and ethnic pay gaps on a yearly basis under Kia Toipoto, the Public Service Pay Gaps Action Plan 2021 to 2024.”
The Government has a number of initiatives underway to support women’s employment and pay transparency, including implementing Fair Pay Agreements which will be published with pay rates agreed in them and Te Mahere Whai Mahi Wāhine Women’s Employment Action Plan, which sets out a range of actions designed to target the gender and ethnic-gender pay gap.
“The Government is committed to reducing the gender pay gap and has agreed to investigate whether a pay transparency system would be beneficial for New Zealand.”